


Electric Souls

by Go0se



Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: Canon Disabled Character, Cross Marian's A+ Parenting, DGM Big Bang 2018, Disability, Friends to Lovers, Happy Ending, Hospitals, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Just Communicate With Each Other Damn It, MMORPGs, Multi, Online Friendship, References to Illness, Slice of Life, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-09
Updated: 2018-09-09
Packaged: 2019-07-08 16:11:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15933932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Go0se/pseuds/Go0se
Summary: Not so long ago, in the mysterious land of Calgary, Canada, twenty-somethings Lenalee, Lavi, and Allen have all been online friends for years.Very belatedly, the three realize they’ve been in the same city almost the whole time, and resolve to become offline friends too.  They're all at different points in their lives but they grow closer in between work, college, other friends, and family. Getting to know each other outside of endless pixel battles is fun, and easier than they all thought it would be.Maybe they’ll all move in together. Could they even fall in love?Probably. Probably they can.





	Electric Souls

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thank you to my friends who supported me in rambling about this for months, especially to Kit Kat and to Rose for reading pieces of it over for me. You are all wonderful.  
> Second huge thank you to the partner in crime I had for this challenge, Piamio, who drew beautiful art for this fic which you can see [here](http://superbadlydrawnallenwalker.tumblr.com/post/177880872828/so-for-the-dgm-big-bang-i-did-two-illustrations).

The sky was dark and furious above her. Lenalee held her breath as she arced through the air and then plummeted down onto -- _control control control!_ \-- and then through the dragon-shaped second level akuma.  
As she hit the ground feet-first, the akuma exploded above her like thunder, experience shards showering down a second later.  
Lenalee exhaled and then grinned, leaning back from her keyboard for a moment.  


Ainsel49’s cheer crackled through her headphones. “Nice work, Flight!” He crowed. “That your last one?”  
“Yeah, looks like. And thanks Ainsel,” Lenalee replied, smiling. She leaned forwards again and got to the business of taking out a few lingering Level Ones that were in her field of vision, picking up all the experience while she was it. Then she paused. “Wait, where’s Clown?” She asked, suddenly worried. “I haven’t heard him in a couple minutes.” 

“I’m here!” A second voice came through quickly. There was some crunching and scrambling from what was probably CrownedClown’s mic. He coughed once, sounding closer. “Sorry, just muted to grab a snack—I’m fine, finished all of them on my section a couple minutes ago. I’m hiding out in some caves right now.”

 

Lenalee wondered briefly if she should go and get herself a snack, but then decided against it. She hadn’t put her braces on that morning, and her crutches were all the way across the living room. Maybe she could ask Komui to get her something later. “That’s okay,” she replied to Clown, her eyes flicking to her health (fine) and Fervour bar (decent), and tucking her hair out of her eyes. “We should all meet up again before we go on, anyway. Where’re the caves?”

“Right. And, uh... around the edge of forest?” Clown’s voice was clear but less certain.  
Ainsel laughed at him. “You can just send the coordinates if you F5, you know.”  
“Oh! Right, here.”

The high-pitched chime pinged. Lenalee launched her avatar into the air, turned on her hovering spell, made sure nothing was lurking behind a cloud to shoot her in the next ten seconds, and then tabbed out to check their text chat.  She smiled at Clown’s code monkey icon. The coordinates weren’t too far from where she was in the game right then.  “Got it,” she told Clown.  
Lenalee tabbed back over, let herself fall back to the earth (leaving a shallow crater, she liked the details like that in the graphics) and then set her avatar’s running path toward the south end of the map. She was the fastest out of the group anyway. “On my way.”

“Same here,” Ainsel said easily. “Man. That was a pretty hard run, yeah?”  
“There were a lot around,” Lenalee agreed. “It’s way harder finding them in the dark.” Their group had started out into the instance a couple hours before, but the ‘shortcut’ route from the nearest hub had turned out to be full of character quests, so naturally all of them had gotten sidetracked. When they’d finally gotten out to the wide field that was their goal it’d cycled to night. On top of that, it’d been storming. It made the whole battle feel really dramatic, but the downside was that actual combat got harder. As she finished her sentence a thunder clap detonated her headphones as if to emphasize her point.  
“Nice,” Ainsel commented when the sound had faded. He continued, “I think so too though. If only we had someone with us who had a way overpowered origin that could help with that, huh?”  
Lenalee snickered.  “Hey,” Clown protested.  
“Hey, I’m just kidding.”

  
CrownedClown had been the second of their group to sign up to GrayWorld, way back three years before, when the game was in the first release. As part of his character creation he’d gotten to choose a backstory and a boon to carry with him into the game, like everyone. He’d picked the Injured Orphan origin and the Clarity boon. Both of which had since gotten pulled out of the game, since they didn’t balance out very well with actual play. The developers didn’t want to force-drop people who had already chosen the backstory, so it had mostly been left as-was, but they had patched in a kind of overwrite for the Clarity boon: if the remaining players who had the boon didn’t use it for a certain amount of time it inflicted magic damage on them. It was the only one in the game to do that.

Lenalee understood what the company was thinking with the balancing issues. She frequently thought that at least her friend was a good player to have it. He didn’t use it to overbalance the game much—at least, not since he’d joined their party. He didn’t talk much about how he played before then. Neither did Ainsel, for that matter.

It didn’t bother Lenalee much, though. They were good guys, and good teammates now; that was what mattered to her.

On her screen, the last of the trees cleared away and she saw the shimmer of Clown’s Innocence and his health bar through the gloom of the night. “I see you,” she said.  
“On your twelve o’clock,” Ainsel said at the same time. Lenalee looked up to see him sailing above her, the handle of his hammer glitching slightly around its edges from how far it must have stretched out of her sight. “’Evening miss,” Ainsel said, mock-chivalrously as she passed him.  
A second later he squawked: “How’d you get up to that level already?!”

  
Just as Lenalee grinned over Clown’s self-conscious retorts, she felt something tap gently on her slipper. She muted herself on the chat and took off her headphones, looking up at her brother. “Is it time already?”  
“Your appointment’s in half an hour,” Komui said, smiling apologetically. He had come into their living room with his coat.  
Lenalee checked the clock on her laptop and sure enough. It wasn’t a surprise, she’d been having her electro-therapy and physio appointments at the same time every week since early high school, but she still frowned to see it. Then she looked up at her brother and smiled again. “Just a second.”

Komui nodded, walking backwards to the door. “I’ll go start Sir Komlin," he said.  
  
With her brother gone briefly, Lenalee put on her headphones again and unmuted. “Hey,” she said, interrupting a small squabble. “Sorry, you two, I have to go.” 

“Right, your appointment,” Clown said. “That’s okay, I was just saying that I had to get going soon too.”  
“Right-- you had that checkup today!”  
“Doctors all around, then,” Ainsel said agreeably.  
“You too, Ainsel?” Lenalee asked, surprised. “Is everything okay?”  
“Oh, y’know, it’s nothing. Just a check-up too.”  
“You didn’t mention it before,” Clown said, sounding curious and a little suspicious.  
“Well, I wouldn’t want to be left out of the party, right? You guys are just too cool.”  
Both Lena and Clown snickered, despite themselves.  
“I guess. Look, I’ll talk with both of you tomorrow,” Lenalee said fondly. She could hear Komui’s steps as he cheerfully jingled back into the kitchen, probably twirling his keys around on his fingers. (He had something of a flair for the dramatic, her brother.)  
“We’ll see you, Flight,” Clown wished her goodbye warmly. Ainsel then agreed and echoed Clown’s statements.  
Warmth pushed through Lenalee’s chest. “You two, too!” She smiled, hoping they could tell.

 

After she logged out, she set her laptop carefully aside on the low table next to the couch. “Komui? I’m ready to go,” she called.   
Komui hurried into the room, bringing her crutches to her. “How was the game today?”  
“Good, thank you,” Lenalee replied, smiling as she stood up. “We got to a mission point we’ve been going towards for a while.”

They kept chatting as they went down to the front door, Lenalee quickly letting go of her crutches so she could pull on her coat. Komui put on her shoes on for her since by then they were getting kind of late, and together they went out to their blue-steel minivan, Sir Komlin III. 

While Komui began their weekly crusade to get downtown before three o’clock, spouting several kinds of unsavoury language, Lena took a minute to zone out. She stared out the window as she stretched her hands.

It would be nice to actually _see_ her friends, she thought a little wistfully. One day.

 


End file.
